1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a floor material and, more particularly, to an embossed floor material made with a resilient foam backing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Typically, floor covering material has been embossed in the manner set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,196,030. Herein a foam flooring is provided with a wear layer, and the resultant floor is provided with an embossed pattern. No attempts were made to secure registration between a printed pattern on the wear layer and the embossed pattern which is applied to the wear layer.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,365,353 discloses a current commercial technique for securing foam floor material with registration between the embossed pattern and the printed pattern on the floor material. The actual embossing is not carried out by a mechanical embossing, but is carried out by a chemical embossing operation.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,655,312 is one of the first attempts at carrying out a mechanical embossing process wherein there is secured a good degree of registration between the embossing and printing comparable to that set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,365,353. Embossing is carried out on a heated floor material and registration is maintained between the embossing and a printed pattern on the floor material. The problem with the technique of the latter-mentioned patent is that the embossing is carried out in such a manner that the foam backing has its resiliency destroyed in the embossed areas and also the embossing is carried out without the bottoming out of the embossing roll. This means that the raised areas of the embossed product are without surface design indentations and textures or finishes caused by the embossing roll.
The inventive process herein is designed to overcome the deficiencies of U.S. Pat. No. 3,655,312 while at the same time improving the registration between a printed pattern and embossing. This improved registration is secured because the inventive process herein has the backing at a much lower operational temperature than the process of U.S. Pat. No. 3,655,312 where the backing material is at about the same temperature as the material to be embossed. The difference in backing temperature means that the backing containing the higher temperature may elongate under varying line tensions to a much greater degree and cause more registration problems.